This is no longer about limits on freedom of speech. It has for too long been about demonization. Insulting something dearly held is not freedom of expression. It is not humor. Further, freedom of speech is being eroded in a truly McCarthyite way under Bush and Blair, and civil rights are negated with people disappearing and going unaccounted for by the State in a terrifying way.

Islam is demonizable because this is the new "enemy" for a super power always in search of enemies. That this whole shaming saga started in Denmark is historically sad. In World War II, Denmark was the brave little mouse that roared.

You refer to a cartoon about a Miss World contest in Africa that you say enraged your Muslim readers because it pointed out that radical Muslims prevented women from voting and from school, and stoned women to death. The misconception is that Islam is one homogenous group from Indonesia to Africa, from the Middle East to Asia. The fact is that every societal or religious denomination has moderate, devout, non-practicing, and extremist members — not to mention various interpretations; and differing scales of education, wisdom, and ignorance. Some devout African Christians believe in child demon possession (Indeed, we have had cases here in the United Kingdom). In extreme cases, the child is sacrificed. Would you draw a cartoon of a black person sacrificing a child?

At the privileged end of the scale (I hesitate to say educated) the president of the United States believes God told him to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. His Secretary of State — upon her visit to the United Kingdom — told the BBC that the Crusade to bestow American values on the Middle East would democratize Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, and Tehran. In Baghdad and Afghanistan most of the entire ancient history of our humanity is destroyed, culture and lives reduced to meaningless.

It is being argued that now even the dearness, the reverence, and the supplication of a deep, life-shaping religion, built on peace, can be attacked. Every night is Die Kristellnacht for Iraq and Afghanistan. Would you draw a Shylock-like Jewish prophet in a skullcap, with a grenade? Families in Iraq, a Muslim country, are being incinerated almost daily; their Qur'an is routinely defiled; and now their Prophet is being insulted.

You refer to a lady in hijab, who, when asked if she would force another women to wear one, said, "Well, if it were for her own good." Your interpretation was someone else deciding for you what you should wear. Is it possible in that brief encounter to understand what she meant? Isn't it possible that in her culture there are courtesies that we in the West are often unaware of? That within her culture she might have advised you of those if you have been in a certain situation — a conservative area, meeting, or home; or the honor of an invitation to a Mosque, for example?

The tragedy of the Twin Towers is labeled a Muslim act and used to threaten to invade wherever, whenever the US administration pleases (as long as it is oil- and gas-rich, and strategically useful). It is not known if the perpetrators were practicing Muslims or in truth who they were for certain.

Maybe they were simply as tragically angry, hopeless, and futureless as the home-grown Americans who detonated the State Building on Oklahoma, or the numerous disaffected, as at Columbine High School students, who shoot up their teachers and fellow pupils. Yet, they are not labeled "Christian" killers.

Americans, in fact, gave countless thousands of dollars to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) — regardless of the rights and wrongs of that struggle. London, Dublin, and Belfast were bombed. The United Kingdom did not bomb New York or Washington; or even Dublin or Armagh (reputed IRA stronghold). Neither Catholicism nor Protestantism were ridiculed. However, cartoons lampooned public figures relentlessly.

You use Bush's and Blair's expression when you talk of "fanatics" in the name of religion who "try to hijack our freedoms." Christian fundamentalists going to Iraq wearing T-shirts depicting someone sitting astride the globe with a Bible in one hand and a crucifix in the other sounds pretty fundamentalist to most. As does the Archbishop of Canterbury's former Envoy to Iraq, Canon Andrew White, suggesting walling off ancient Nineveh in northern Iraq and turning it into an entire Christian enclave. Imagine if Muslims did the equivalent, suggesting a walled enclave in the West.

Far right politics is dictating — overtly or covertly — that Muslims are treated as the fascists treated the Jews. It is being shamefully drip fed into the public psyche. On March 29, 2006, soldier Jody Casey (fresh from "liberated Iraq") told Inigo Gillmore and Theresa Smith of The Guardian of their training. This of course comes straight from the Pentagon. "They ... jam it into your head 'this is a hajji, this is a hajji'! You totally take the human being out of it and turn them in to a videogame." He continued, "if you start looking at them as humans and stuff like that how are you going to kill them?" What monsters are "our" values breeding?

There are boundaries that are basics: courtesy and respect for the richness of the diversities of cultures with which the world has been honored. Those are the building blocks of our common humanity. They should be within our being and that being should be built on respect. Attacking or making fun of any religion falls without this. It does not need writing down. It is called civilization. Our duty in the media is to defend it with all our might without bias. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who shall guard the guardians?)

As I was writing this I remembered an incident. I interviewed a widower who lost his wife and baby in the bombing of the Ameriyah Shelter in Baghdad, in which hundreds of people — mostly women and children — were incinerated. Before I left, I asked if I might take a photograph of him in the garden. I had taken my shoes off to enter the house and, as we reached the doorway, he kicked his backless indoor mules off for me to wear outside in order to save me putting on my more awkward ones. I literally walked in the shoes of one who had suffered so much. A small, huge, haunting, and gentle gesture.

That we are having this debate on IslamOnline.net is an honor and a great opportunity for exploring and understanding. However, I believe it shames a faction of Western society that it is necessary. We should all be simply able to walk in the shoes of others.